Merchant Archive

/shrug... a customer is a customer...credits are all the same...you don't want to sell it..don't put it on a vendor and start doing contract orders. I don't care if 1 person or 20 buy my products..as long as they sell. If your in it to satisfy many customers...go the personal contract route...if your using impersonal vendors and stocking an item..who cares? You fell like a personal miner? Raise your prices,,or do contract work, Merchants are meant/supposed to bargain hunt and try to turn a profit..its the only game merchants have. I don't have a prob;em with it , as long as someone pays my profit margin on my product.

We raised our water prices, following a rough guide of Q<700 2cpu, Q700+ 2.5, Q800+ 3cpu, Q900+ 3.5 cpu and Q975+ 4cpu. Lower or equal too most shops, but not so low that we are such a desireable target. (shrug) our merchant effeciencies will just make us richer instead of more competitive.

Also changed other popular resources to match.

We /tip bank the regulars who buy from us as a discount. Playing with the idea of a Buyers Club, having folks email (0 cost to join) and on subsequent purchases they get a discount.

To those who said "What does it matter, a sale is a sale", you do not seem to fully understand the point. If I give you a choice of making 1.6m credits by next weekend, or 1.7m credits by next weekend, which would you choose? In this example the resource being availabledrives otheritem sales higher.

I saw a suggestion for a wholesale vendor and I'd like to add a little to it. Maybe someone already suggested it:

put the "wholesale vendor" inside a shop with a large entrance fee and then put your wholesalers on the free admittance list. Combine this tactic with the suggestion above to buy (at a 5-7% discount) from multiple smaller producers in order to meet demand. Possibly combine with the small wholesale discount also suggested above.

How about a "mail-in rebate" concept, SWG-style?

Price your goods higher, maybe a factor of 2 or 3, and tell customers that when they make a purchase, they look at the total amount they spent and offer a single item back to the vendor for a "rebate" amount (i.e. 50% if you doubled the cost, 33% if you tripled it).

Put in a disclaimer that there is a limit of rebates per customer per day (or some such scheme), so if your vendors get fleeced, you reject their offered items instead of buying them.

You have all the emails of the sales, and can see the names of the people making offers to tie them up.

Just an idea.